The move to all-flash arrays is disrupting IT and business as we knew it, in a Digital Darwinism paradigm shift, says Pure Storage.
Speaking at the Johannesburg leg of the 'Pure Live' global roadshow, Pure Storage EMEA EVP James Petter said: "We are working in an environment where flash, and specifically Pure Storage, is now the disruptor." Thanks to digitisation and mainstream cloud adoption, which has fundamentally disrupted the way we consume IT, business is taking a leap to new culture, tools and processes, he said.
"We are seeing what I call 'Digital Darwinism'. Those who are able to adapt quickest will survive, and those who can't will die." Citing Blockbuster and Netflix as a good example of this, he noted that both companies sold fundamentally the same product, but their delivery was different, with Blockbuster selling content on disk, and Netflix selling it digitally. "The innovator and disruptor survived," he said. "This is the world we are living in now, and as IT professionals, it is our job to deliver the value that helps our customers survive."
Noting that Pure Storage consistently leads in the all-flash market category according to Gartner Magic Quadrant and IDC MarketScape reports, Petter said the company's mission was to pioneer in the field, modernising and reimagining the storage experience. "We think disk is dead and flash is here to stay," he said, and Pure Storage innovations such as FlashArray//m, FlashArray//m10, Flashstack Mini and the new FlashBlade expandable storage platform are changing the industry, he said. "Analysts are looking at us with real excitement because of the disruption we can deliver."
With a range of new products coming to market in 2016, Pure Storage is extending the power of all-flash storage to SMEs and mid-size enterprises, as well as paving the way for unprecedented levels of unstructured data storage and processing, Pure Storage said.
Backing Pure Storage's disruption of the storage market, the company's channel is stepping up its efforts to support customers in their move to all-flash. Pure Storage RSA Country Manager Rupert Brazier noted that the channel partners are carefully selected and a critical part of Pure Storage's success. "Our partners are Pure Storage. They are part of what we do on a day to day basis. We are dependent on our partners from a services point of view, so we are quite pedantic and turn away more partners than we sign up," he said.
Brazier said: "We don't want to have hundreds of partners in the market - we believe in close relationships with trusted partners rather than a spray and pray approach, so currently, we have only two authorised service partners in Johannesburg." Brazier is confident that Pure Storage's value, simplicity and sustainable model will resonate with price sensitive local customers looking to innovate.
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